Egor Polyakov - Personal Website

This is the source code for my personal academic website hosted on GitHub Pages. The site showcases my work as a musicologist, composer, and researcher specializing in computational musicology.

🎵 About

I am a Ukrainian-born composer and researcher specializing in the application of computational methods to musicology. My work focuses on human-computer interaction in music, from performance and composition to advanced computational analysis.

🏗️ Site Structure

egorpol.github.io/
├── _layouts/          # Jekyll layout templates
├── _plugins/          # Custom plugins (currently empty)
├── _posts/           # Blog posts (Markdown)
├── assets/           # Static assets
│   ├── css/         # Stylesheets
│   ├── js/          # JavaScript files
│   └── images/      # Images
├── _site/            # Built site output (do not edit; generated)
├── _config.yml      # Jekyll configuration
├── index.md         # Homepage
├── blog.md          # Blog listing page
├── sitemap.xml      # XML sitemap
├── robots.txt       # Search engine directives
└── README.md        # This file

🚀 Features

• Responsive Design: Works on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices
• Dark/Light Theme: Persistent toggle with saved preference (light by default)
• Interactive Image Viewer: Click any image to view in full-screen with navigation
• Accessibility: WCAG compliant with skip links, focus indicators, and semantic HTML
• SEO Optimized: jekyll-seo-tag, JSON‑LD structured data (via page front matter), sitemap, and robots.txt
• Blog System: Jekyll-powered blog with categories and excerpts
• Code Highlighting: Syntax highlighting for code blocks
• Print Styles: Optimized for printing
• Rel=me Links: Social verification links emitted from _config.yml social links

🛠️ Technology Stack

• GitHub Pages (github-pages gem): Production runtime that pins Jekyll and plugins
• Jekyll: Static site generator (version pinned by GitHub Pages)
• CSS3: Custom styling with CSS variables for theming
• JavaScript: Vanilla JS for theme switching and interactions
• Font Awesome: Icons
• Highlight.js: Code syntax highlighting
• jekyll-seo-tag: Open Graph/Twitter meta and SEO helpers

📦 Dependencies

Jekyll Plugins

• jekyll-feed: RSS/Atom feed generation
• jekyll-seo-tag: SEO optimization
• jekyll-paginate: Blog pagination (optional; currently disabled)

External Libraries

• Font Awesome 6.4.0 (CDN)
• Highlight.js 11.9.0 (CDN)

Custom JavaScript

• theme.js: Theme switching functionality
• image-viewer.js: Interactive image viewer with navigation

🏃‍♂️ Local Development

Prerequisites

• Ruby 2.7+ (matches GitHub Pages runtime)
• Bundler gem

Setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/egorpol/egorpol.github.io.git
   cd egorpol.github.io

2. Install dependencies:

   bundle install

3. Start the development server:

   bundle exec jekyll serve

4. Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:4000

Build for Production

bundle exec jekyll build

The built site is output to _site/. Do not edit files in that directory manually.

📝 Content Management

Adding Blog Posts

1. Create a new Markdown file in _posts/ directory
2. Start from POST_TEMPLATE.md and copy it into _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-your-title.md
3. Use the following front matter format:

   ---
   layout: post
   title: "Your Post Title"
   date: YYYY-MM-DD
   categories: [category1, category2]
   tags: [tag1, tag2, tag3]
   excerpt: "Brief description of the post"
   ---

Important: Categories must be defined as YAML arrays (with square brackets). See CATEGORIES.md for detailed guidelines. Recommended: Keep 1-3 categories and 3-6 tags for clean taxonomy pages and blog filtering.

Updating Site Information

• Edit _config.yml for site-wide settings
• Modify index.md for homepage content
• Update assets/css/main.css for styling changes
• Navigation and contact anchor are defined in _layouts/default.html (Contact links to {{ '/' | relative_url }}#contact)
• Per‑page JSON‑LD can be added under structured_data: (and optional local_business_schema:) in front matter

🎨 Customization

Themes

The site uses CSS custom properties for theming. Colors are defined in assets/css/main.css:

:root {
    --bg-color: #ffffff;
    --text-color: #333333;
    --primary-color: #0066cc;
    /* ... more variables */
}

Layouts

• default.html: Standard page layout
• custom.html: Enhanced layout with additional navigation
• post.html: Blog post layout
• page.html: Simple page layout

🔧 Configuration

Key settings in _config.yml:

• Site title, description, and author
• GitHub username for social links
• Jekyll plugins and settings
• SEO and analytics configuration (GA4 placeholders: google_analytics and gtag)
• Markdown engine (kramdown) and syntax highlighter (rouge)
• social.name and social.links (used for rel=me links in the layout)

📊 Performance

The site is optimized for performance with:

• Minimal external dependencies
• Optimized images
• Efficient CSS and JavaScript
• CDN-hosted libraries
• Static generation for fast loading

🔒 Security

• No client-side data collection by default
• HTTPS enforced by GitHub Pages
• Analytics are disabled unless GA4 IDs are provided
• Secure external dependencies

📄 License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.

🤝 Contributing

While this is a personal website, suggestions and improvements are welcome. Please feel free to open issues or submit pull requests.

📞 Contact

• Email: egor.polyakov@hfm-weimar.de
• GitHub: @egorpol
• Website: egorpol.github.io

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Last updated: October 20, 2025